Nicole Raeburn

Associate Professor

Nikki has a longstanding passion for sociology, social justice, good food and good films, traveling, dancing, laughing, and spending time with family and friends. She has a 12-year-old son who makes her laugh and think every day, and they have two miniature wiener dogs named Jennifer and Madeline (a.k.a. Big J in the House and Mad Dog). Nikki earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from Ohio State University. She teaches sociology classes on Youth and Activism; Diversity of American Families; U.S. Inequalities and Social Justice; Feminism, Gender, and the Body; and Sex and Sexualities, an earlier version of which she prepared as the Sociology Department's first LGBTQ studies course back in 1998. Her research has mostly focused on the mobilization, strategies, and outcomes of the workplace movement for lesbian, gay, and bisexual rights in corporate America, universities, and government-sector employment. Her book Changing Corporate America from Inside Out: Lesbian and Gay Workplace Rights won the Max Weber Award for Distinguished Scholarship from the American Sociological Association. With the recent launch of her new research project, Nikki has begun to explore counter-hegemonic representations of gender and sexual identity in children's literature.